WORTH NOTING ON TV

By
Alan Bunce /
March 17, 1994

* THURSDAY

NCAA basketball championships (CBS, noon to 5 p.m., and 8 p.m. to midnight, EST): Regional telecasts of first-round games on the road to college basketball's Final Four - the four teams who will play in the NCAA semifinals. (Check local listings for games broadcast in your area.) * FRIDAY

National Press Club (C-Span, 6-7 p.m.): Speech by Janet Reno, attorney general of the United States. * SUNDAY

Ultimate Betrayal (CBS, 9- 11 p.m.): You may be aware of the Child Abuse Accountability Act introduced to the House of Representatives by Pat Schroeder (D) of Colorado: It would help certain abuse victims claim damages. But until you've seen this disturbing yet sensitive dramatization, you may not be fully aware of the case that led her to file the bill - or of the precedent-setting legal action that helped heal the psychic scars of four women.

Based on this case, the production stars Marlo Thomas, Ally Sheedy, Mel Harris, and Kathryn Dowling, all of them totally credible in the roles of four grown sisters who had been sexually abused in the past by their father.

By bringing legal action against him long after the fact, the four women took the giant first step needed to assuage their lingering mental anguish. In the film, their two brothers are outraged, apparently feeling their sisters should keep their painful memories to themselves and let their father live out his life in the comfortable knowledge that these now-grown women won't have the resolve to confront him.

But they do confront him, and though the brothers may not understand why, viewers will - just from watching the women's glowing faces after the guilty verdict: Arms linked, they are the picture of a triumphant sisterhood that has faced down the father image in their minds and the flesh-and-blood father in the courtroom. Please check local listings for these programs.